Colin Sheridan: If Mayo were born broken, then they have truly lived by mending

James Durcan, 22, and Ryan O'Donoghue of Mayo celebrate their victory over Dublin. 

Why should we blame them that they fill our days with misery? Or, that they would, of late, have taught to ignorant men, most violent ways? This was not a sporting victory. Nor was it the simple dismantling of an empire. For so long it looked like just another defining chapter in an encyclopedia of woe. Instead, it turned out to be a parable, and an ode to Saint Jude, the patron saint of lost causes.

It came down to an outstretched leg. It came - the leg - when Mayo were five points down with seven minutes to play and drowning in a sea of blue. It looked like the last act of a desperate man, a desperate team, playing poorly but somehow surviving. The leg belonged to Diarmuid O’Connor. He chased a cause so lost his stubbornness to retrieve it seemed a tad quaint, a typical Mayo thing to do. A bit daft. Half cracked.

There was nothing silky or rehearsed about O’Connor’s slide to retrieve Rob Hennelly’s sliced kick. The sarcastic jeers of Hill 16 were still ringing in his ears as he sprinted to the end line. As he connected with the ball, there was no plan for where it was to go or who was to collect it. There exists no strength and conditioning metric to measure what brought O’Connor to this point. He did it, I'm guessing, because he thought it was the right thing to do.

It was. 

His outstretched boot volleyed the ball into the path of Kevin McLoughlin. He steadied himself and pointed. Five points became four. On an evening when scores were as rare as noble politicians, suddenly, catching Dublin seemed much less daft.

Diarmuid O’Connor has long looked like a man burdened by the weight of the world. If Lee Keegan smiles his way through conflict, O’Connor sighs. Within this Mayo team, he has had the presence of a village elder since he was 21. On Saturday night, he was part shaman, part assassin.

It came down, too, to an act of redemption for goalkeeper Rob Hennelly. Mayo enjoy almost universal acclaim for their efforts this last decade. The goodwill has often stopped at Hennelly. His cameos in big games have sometimes done him a disservice, and Mayo supporters, prone to self-congratulation, have been as cruel as any in their dismissal of his qualities. Long before he nailed the equaliser on full time, his free-taking, restarts and general play was excellent. His equaliser, retaken after Dublin's Philly McMahon was pinged for attempting to ice the kicker, was just another totemic moment in a game that, up to O’Connor’s outstretched leg, seemed doomed to be forgotten.

For an hour, it was a brutal game of football. Some Dublin players could’ve gotten sent off three times. Only for the visceral nature of a couple of the more noteworthy incidents - John Small's ‘hit’ on Eoghan McLaughlin- this would’ve been just another day at the office for Dublin. Theirs has been a rule of fear. Playing on the edge has been their badge of honour. More than that, it has been increasingly used as a subliminal taunt at their opponents - that's the difference between us and you.

In the end, admiring Dublin for what they were achieving was like tipping the cap to the British empire colonising countries when they had guns and those they conquered had spears. What’s to admire?

Had they won, there would have been some tired outrage before eventual acceptance. It is what it is. Our perpetual Stockholm syndrome.  Instead, Mayo produced one the greatest acts of defiance seen in Ireland since the Land League. Then, the people of South Mayo orchestrated a campaign of social ostracism against the absentee landlord Captain Charles Boycott, who used his stature to browbeat his tenants into submission and eviction.

On Saturday night, Tommy Conroy of The Neale, from the same part of the world as those who toppled Boycott, staged his own mini-revolution. Misfiring in the first half, he rallied to produce two scores of immense significance to put the shits up Dublin.

Jordan Flynn was ubiquitous in his efforts. Padraig O’Hora grew more composed with every intercept. Mayo, missing Cillian O’Connor and Aidan O’Shea and Oisin Mullin, led by a veteran Lee Keegan and a few lads nobody outside of Geesala had ever heard of, were reeling in Dublin.

None of it made any sense, which is often the way when Mayo go loco. There seemed to be no discernable plan. Aidan O’Shea’s substitution, though entirely justified, seemed the act of an angry CEO benching his star salesman. More than that, there appeared to be the complete abandonment of onfield strategy. Mayo, suddenly unburdened by the expectation of playing a submissive role to an overbearing opponent, just cut loose.

All the talk of Dublin choosing to hate Mayo, to you know, give them that edge, seemed to not so much inspire Mayo, but move them to pity. They hammered Dublin in extra time. Mayo. The housewives' favourite. The nearly men. The media darlings. The Tik-Tok men. The rabble from the west who obsess over being loved far more than winning. Yeah. That crowd.

Fiction needing to make sense has always given the rest of us hope that truth, whenever and however it wills out, is somehow better. It may all yet end in tears, but on Saturday it didn’t seem to matter. This was far less about Mayo reaching another All-Ireland than it was about Mayo ending something. It was only them who could do it. For the thousands there who witnessed it, and the tens of thousands more who sat at home Bayridge in Brooklyn and Blacksod and Balla, not to mention the many more listening from hospital beds for whom the last year has been torture, this was a night when the next day truly didn’t matter.

If Mayo were born broken, then they have truly lived by mending. Theirs is a perennially outstretched leg, chasing a lost cause. A bit daft, half-cracked, and utterly, utterly beautiful.